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Scientists have revived worms that had been frozen for 42,000 years

A group of Russian scientists have
successfully revived two species of tiny worms that they discovered suspended
in an icy chunk of Siberian permafrost.

The worms, known as nematodes or more commonly
as roundworms, had been frozen for up to 42,000 years, since a time when much
of the planet was covered in ice.

But they weren't dead — just cryogenically
preserved.

The researchers brought the worms back to a
lab, where they slowly thawed them over several weeks. The researchers put them
in petri dishes with food, stored at 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees
Fahrenheit).

As they warmed, the worms started showing
signs of life, moving and eating. That marks the first documented time
multi-cellular organisms have returned to functioning after being frozen in
permafrost.

The researchers published their findings in
the journal Doklady Biological Sciences in May, and the study became available
online this month. In the report, the authors acknowledge that certain types of
bacteria, algae, yeasts, seeds, and spores have been found to remain viable
even after being frozen in permafrost for thousands or even millions of years.
But an organism as complex as the nematode has never been shown to be capable
of this.

Until now, the longest nematodes had been
dormant then revived was 39 years, according to Science Alert. Similarly,
tardigrades that had been frozen for 30 years were brought back to life by
Japanese researchers in 2016, as Gizmodo pointed out.

The permafrost samples came from the remote
Yakutia region in Siberia. The researchers analyzed over 300 samples, and
selected two that had well-preserved nematodes in them. One of the samples was
100 feet deep and estimated to have frozen 32,000 years ago, while the other
was just over 11 feet deep and froze 42,000 years ago.

The scientists said they can't rule out the
possibility that the samples were contaminated at some more recent point, but
said they kept the experiment as sterile as possible. So the most likely
explanation is that the worms were indeed revived after being frozen for
millennia.

Nematodes are impressive little worms, though
they measure less than 1 millimeter across. They've been found living almost a
mile below the Earth's surface, and some have even adapted to living inside
slug intestines, according to Live Science.

The Russian team noted in the paper that their
findings could have implications for astrobiology — the search for life outside
our planet — as well as cryomedicine and cryobiology, which is the study of how
extremely low temperatures affect life.

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